


Enough To Fear

by whisperbird



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-25
Updated: 2012-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 12:24:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whisperbird/pseuds/whisperbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More small snippets of Jake and Kriem's life, pre-series; sometimes caring for someone is worse than being alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enough To Fear

Jake wakes up around 6:30 pm and the sky reminds him of a nightmare he once had. More feeling and color than something real remembered; those kinds of bright oranges and pink streaking the sky on a hot evening, rising above the skyline of Sternbild, always did. Maybe it wasn't a nightmare, maybe it was a suppressed memory. Something violent and long forgotten. 

There's no plot to it, just a foreboding feeling. He grins, big toothy grin, sliding his arm, sticky with sweat, over his eyes to block the sight. There's nothing to be afraid of in this world if you're not ordinary. Next are the monsters and the mythical creatures of this age. More monster on his end, though, and he knows it. The grin turns to a laugh, attracting the interest of Kriem, who stirs next to him. 

Her body is sweaty and hot as well, the arm he had pressed against her bare back left a red imprint when he moved it. The air conditioner in this apartment isn't great, and sleeping shirtless with a fan is the only way to keep cool during the day. Sometimes they were nocturnal. It was easier to operate at night, and somehow Kriem found this amusing. 

"They think we're the rats of Sternbild, don't they," she had thought, before he could turn off his telepathy. It wasn't said with sarcasm or hatred, but an humored lilt, if a thought could have a _lilt_. 

Kriem rolls over, her camisole bunched up under her breasts, bare white stomach showing. 

"What time is it, Mr. Jake?" then, "Are we ever going to get up during the day again?" 

"Almost seven, I don't know," he murmurs, arm still covering his eyes. "Go close the blinds, that's why it's so hot in here." 

"But then it'll be dark." 

"Then turn on the TV." 

He watches Kriem moving about the room, rolling the cord for the blinds, turning on the old television set sitting atop a dresser. She sits on the edge of the bed and watches the end of the news. 

"--record temperatures, it was a hot one out there, folks. The sun may have gone down, but staying cool wouldn't be a bad idea." 

"There's your heat right there, Mr. Jake." 

He grunts in response. The screen goes black; Hero TV will be coming on soon. 

Jake wonders if she remembers last night and how her injury is. He doesn't ask, but he knows soon enough she'll sidle up next to him, and --depending on her mood-- either child or harlot, will rest her head on his arm or run her hand down it. She's young, but on the brink of womanhood. There's something kind of adorable about it, in the way she thinks herself grown and has times of utter immaturity. She's good at doing what she's told, and once she shed her fear and doubt, Jake realized she was whip-smart and good at not being a good person, as simple as that seemed. 

And just like that, his tiny accomplice lowers herself next to him, trying to coax him out of bed. "What do we have to eat?" she asks. "I can cook eggs." 

"Is that all we have?" 

"Don't be picky," she says and he knows she's sick of cheap food too. 

"How is your eye?" 

"It's fine." She sounds embarrassed. Last night, it didn't look wonderful, but not bad enough to bruise horribly. He fumbles for the lamp on the bedside table without sitting up, and tries be stony-faced as he sees the bruise forming over her left eye. It's not too dark, just a little purple but it's still an injury and still his fault. 

* 

She doesn't see it that way, he didn't lift a hand to her. It didn't matter if he smacked her or if someone else did, it was still his fault. That bastard Jake was robbing, who thought it would be cute to involve Kriem, was dead now. He would've been dead anyway, but Jake had kicked his limp corpse in the side with a laugh, after providing the flash that killed him, and the asshole had slumped in the alley. 

She wasn't as adept as he was at using her powers at a moment's notice and the guy had hit her before she could pull out a hair and make anything work for her. Jake shouldn't have brought her. 

Her eye was swollen and she had buried her face in his coat as he lifted her from the pavement, carrying her back to the apartment, his coat pockets stuffed with a pretty good amount of someone else's cash. He could hear her thinking about being humiliated, how she couldn't help Mr. Jake, how she'd gotten in the way. If she expressed it verbally, he'd tell her to stop. But for now, Kriem found his mind-reading shocking and somewhat upsetting, so he closed their one-way line of communication. 

It'd been hot last night too, and they passed the residential areas as the streetlights came on, families eating dinner, people rushing home from work. Neither of them spoke, but as soon as they reached home themselves, Kriem whispered for him to put her down. Both her lips were sucked in and she was walking rather stiffly. 

She fell back on the couch in the living room, and from the kitchen Jake could see her limbs becoming jelly, and her lip quivering. He threw his jacket over the shit scattered on the table and stood in the door way, watching her burying her face again, but in the couch instead. 

As soon as he approached her and put a hand on her leg, she startled. His hands were still gloved and covered in a bit of dried blood, almost undistinguishable from his color of the leather, except the blood had began to brown. It wasn't his blood. 

"Excuse me, Mr. Jake." She pushed past him and he heard the spring creaking on the bed, Kriem presumably throwing herself onto it. 

He wasn't going to follow her, she probably needed to cry and cry out some of her weird guilt, but it was pissing him off. It wasn't her responsibility to take care of him, it was her responsibility to take of herself. People get hit, shit happens, but she was thinking of it the wrong way. 

He quit smoking about six years ago, quit smoking everything but cigars when he could afford them in the little cruddy stores run by foreigners. Dealing with young women made him feel like a smoke. 

Instead he followed her into the bedroom, and he pulled her up by her arm, not hard, as she came up willingly. They stared into each other's eyes from the light of the lamp. It illuminated her dark hair like a halo, her eyes shining with tears and her blossoming black eye. 

He pushed her roughly into his chest, her ear against him. 

"Hear that, Kriem?" He held her a little closer, less rough. "That's my heartbeat. Guess what? I'm not fucking dead. Take your own pulse. You're not dead either. You're not my bodyguard, you're just a kid." 

She rarely cried in front of him, and stopped at his words. He heard her swallow. 

"Stop beating yourself up over things you can't control. Control things you can. You can't control me or the shit I do. Take care of yourself, Kriem." 

He let go of her, let her fall back on her knees onto the bed and he pulled off a glove, ran his hands through her hair. He was never rough with her, but desperate times and whatever. Any bit of roughness required delicacy. Jake Martinez wasn't a man of any sort of delicacy, but a soothing bare hand on her forehead made her smile for the first time in a while. 

* 

He cares about her more than he'd let anyone know, and that was a damn hard feeling. He'd avoided it as long as he could, but seeing her tonight, and thinking of last night, her black eye, and he felt bad. If the jackass who'd hit her wasn't dead now, he'd fucking kill him again. 

"My eye is fine," she says. "And no, don't look like that, I'm not being tough." 

He laughs. "I'd give you a steak to put over it, but if we had meat to put over anything, it'd be a hot pan." 

Reluctantly, she laughs too and lies down on her pillow. 

"What are we going to do, Mr. Jake?" 

"Tonight we're not doing shit. I was going to go buy a drink, though --" 

"No, I mean." She sighs. "I don't know what I mean. Are we going to keep on like this forever? Is this what your life was like before me?" 

His life before her was different and not different at all. 

"I never want to not be with you," she says, her voice lowered merely to a whisper now. 

"I'm not going anywhere," he chuckles, knowing it'll probably end up being a lie. She knows caring about someone is a damn hard feeling too. 

"Go get some ice on your eye," is the only thing he can think to follow that up with, and it seems good enough for her. 

Later that night he goes walking, while Kriem lies in bed watching TV, walks far enough that when he returns, his legs feel like blocks. It isn't a very cathartic walk, but the feeling of a nightmare has lifted. Maybe he dreamed something distasteful last night and can only feel the end of it. 

There's nothing to fear on the dark street, nothing to fear but him, but he knows Kriem is all he has and he's all she has. That's something to be afraid of.

**Author's Note:**

> First fic I've written since the last Jake/Kriem. What can I say?


End file.
